HOUSTON – You hire them to kill bugs, but some consumers are telling the Better Business Bureau that deceptive and scary sales tactics are what's bugging them about a local pest control company.
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So Local 2 consumer investigator Amy Davis went undercover using hidden cameras in a year-long investigation to find out if the company is killing pests or hiring them.
"First thing, -- let me go with the most important," said the man who identified himself as Billy Lewis with A All County Pest Control. "You have termites."
It's not the news you want to hear from your pest control company. We only heard it because we wired our producer's home with hidden cameras and made an appointment with A All County Pest Control.
"I saw one black widow and three brown recluse spiders, which are not good," Lewis told the producer.
"They're bamboozlers," Omega McCulley said Lewis and A All County owner Dennis Strothers.
McCulley found the company online, but she wishes she had first seen the BBB report giving A All County a failing grade.
"You know, the real evil vermin might not be in the walls or the attic," Houston BBB President Dan Parsons said. "It's in this company."
Parsons said he's heard too many stories like McCulley's. She hired A All County to treat her home for carpenter ants.
"They took advantage of me. I mean, I trusted them," McCulley said.
But in just an hour and a trip into her attic, McCulley said Strothers and Lewis told her they found much bigger problems.
"He came back down and he said I had a severe, severe infestation problem," recounted McCulley.
She says Lewis and Strothers told her she had a rodent infestation, and that the rodent urine in her attic could be harmful for four years.
"As a matter of fact, he says, 'A person in your condition, with your cancer, you should not be breathing this,'" McCulley said she was told.
A concerned cancer patient, McCulley watched her original bill of $300 jump to $400, then $895 to finally more than $1,700.
"He says to me, 'How about you do this? You give me a check today for $150. You give me another check for $150, and then you post date another check for next month, another $150.' And I said 'I don't have the money. What part of this are you not getting that I don't have the money?'" McCulley said.
McCulley's story is what prompted KPRC Local 2 to invite A All County to a producer's home. When we showed state investigators our hidden camera video, they said Strothers even lied to get our producer to pay up, telling her she had termites and that her house had never been treated for them.
Raleigh Jenkins is the owner of ABC Pest Control, a top-rated BBB company. ABC checked out the producer's home before and after A All County came out and found no sign of termites, but that's not what Lewis with A All County said.
"They're on the fence and there's a tube on your house," Lewis told the producer. "I broke open the tube. White bugs came out. It is active."
When Lewis and Strothers were asked about those terrible black widow and brown recluse spiders, Strothers told the producer, "We sprayed them already. They already melted down and everything."
Jenkins said there would be some evidence of the spider.
"The only thing the chemical's going to do is kill the spider," said Jenkins. "The webbing would still be there. The dead insect would still be there, and, if there is an egg sack, it would still be there. We don't have a magic potion that just makes them all disappear."
"You've been warned by TDA (Texas Department of Agriculture) right?" Davis asked Strothers. "About high-pressure sales tactics and telling people that they need this or that in such and such time?" "
No," Strothers replied. "I haven't really been warned about anything from TDA."
Local 2 Investigates discovered A All County racked up 10 complaints in 2010. The average pest control company in Texas receives less than one complaint annually. The Texas Department of Agriculture, the agency that licenses Texas pest control companies, has never revoked an exterminator's license.
"They're undermanned. They're understaffed," said Jenkins. "They just can't get to every complaint and really resolve the issues as they come up. The fact is a lot of people are able to stay underneath that radar and do just enough not to get shut down, and that seems to be what's happening here."
The state fined A All County $900 for the violations KPRC Local 2 caught on hidden camera. Most of the other complaints against the company resulted in warnings. The company is still in business here in Harris County.
To make sure you hire a reputable company, look up the business on the BBB's website. Customers can learn a whole lot about a company by just doing a search for them on the Internet. If customers in our story would have done that, it would have been a real eye-opener.
If you see that a company has a high rating, or five stars, make sure you know who is doing the rating. There are some online companies out there that will advertise that any company has five stars if that company pays them enough to say it.